It is known to use computer software to determine staffing types and/or levels. It is also known that some staffing issues are controlled, at least in part, by Service Level Agreements (SLAs) and that it is important to comply with the terms of the SLA(s) when staffing levels are determined. In the art of determining staffing levels, it is recognized that there are different Service Classes used to categorize resources (that is, generally human employees and/or human contractors). It is further known that in some situations an employee of a first Service Class may be able to perform tasks associated with a different service class. For example, a fully-registered, traditional “nurse” may be able to perform tasks associated with the Service Class of “nurse practitioner” (or, more correctly “licensed practical nurse”). As another example, a level 2 help desk person for computer and application support is qualified to handle level 1 and level 2 customer problems whereas a level 1 help desk person is only qualified to handle level 1 customer problems; level 2 problems are more severe than level 1 problems. It is known that a staffing issue may involve staffing for multiple shifts, locations, Service Classes and the like.
There are at least two different types of staffing situations: (i) staffing for ticketing systems; and (ii) staffing for call centers. Call centers and ticketing systems have different characteristics such as service time distribution. Another difference between ticketing system staffing and call center staffing is that call centers experience lost calls due to a limited (and controllable) number of communication lines, while, in a ticketing system, substantially all “tickets” are queued and eventually processed.
The following are known examples of resource allocation algorithms: (i) U.S. Pat. No. 7,480,913 (“913 Buco”) (see, especially, column 11, line 53 to column 14, line 30 describing a greedy scheme, for task-based scheduling that implements locally optimal decisions); (ii) US patent application 2011/0077994 (“994 Segev”) (describing an iterative method of staffing using simulation); and (iii) US patent application 2012/0087486 (“486 Guerrero”) (resource allocation for call centers having a call center service time distribution and the possibility that calls that are lost when there aren't enough available phone lines).